What Do Leaders Mean By “Science”?
While debate rages about lockdowns, ideology goes under the radar
In his own words, California Governor Gavin Newsom is on record repudiating what you may have thought he meant by science. In response to a claim that lockdown metrics should not be monolithic by county lines, he responded:
You believe in growth and you don’t believe in inclusion? Then we’re going to leave a lot of people behind. And one of the things we value as a state is inclusion. And we believe that we’re all better off when we’re all better off. Leaving communities behind in order to game your testing and your case rates I don’t think is right.
I wrote this article for data scientists as well as other concerned readers. But scientist or not, if you’re at all interested in the question of definitions…I don’t need to point out the holes and assumptions in what he said above. But if you’re reading this quickly or late at night I don’t mind helping out:
- Is he saying the effort to increase inclusion isn’t leaving others behind if they’re walled off in a county where certain metrics happen to be higher?
- Valuing inclusion is a vague notion. Do we value anything else? I suspect we do. To what degree?
- To say a county is “gam[ing their] testing” suggests cheating relative to a rule. Who decided the rule and how is it demonstrated to be appropriate?
This is not to negate the value of inclusion, but to question whether the value is even being served. Is economically distressing a whole county with a lockdown — rather than, say, a city, zip code, or census tract — the best way to pool a region’s resources to manage economic needs so others aren’t left behind? Cities certainly are tracked per capita; one sample map is the first image in this news story.
In any state, there are many people who happen to live in a jurisdiction because of family or civic responsibilities, career availability, cultural practices, or health or economic limitations.
Maybe they even made that choice when their area was a very different sort of community.
Maybe you agree that, no matter how lucky or unlucky anyone may be in that regard, we all have an obligation to sacrifice as long as others within the same arbitrarily chosen boundaries are worse off.
Maybe such sacrifice shouldn’t morally be restricted to those who happen to be in counties with demanding metrics. Maybe the whole state should show solidarity.
Or the whole country.
Maybe there should be a one-world government. Are you willing to roll the dice on whose values prevail for the next four years? Or generation? Or until a cataclysmic event is sufficient to trigger change?
Not if the fights I’ve seen merely over whether school districts can teach evolution — until the next election — are any indication.
Speaking of unanimous opinion, I hope that, whatever your thoughts on what “we” “owe” a certain demographic beyond equal protection under the law — I hope you can agree we ought to separate science from value judgments.
After protests, last spring, an article that was titled “Suddenly, Public Health Officials Say Social Justice Matters More Than Social Distance” reported that, on June 1, Jennifer Nuzzo, a Johns Hopkins epidemiologist, tweeted “In this moment the public health risks of not protesting to demand an end to systemic racism greatly exceed the harms of the virus.”
Aside from anyone’s thoughts on that, would you agree that leaders should make it clear that their definition of science includes such considerations?
Whatever hypocrisy or ignorance may be exposed, perhaps we should be glad if it at least jars others into consistency, such as allowing other gatherings so as to appear more balanced.
